We Are
by Inari Kasugawa
Summary: Thinking about the world as more than names, what do they suffer? To be updated. Changed to M for general disstressing language. Maybe I'm not sensitive to it?
1. We Are

We Are

When did this pain begin to creep into them? Had it been there from the beginning?

The people walking in the streets couldn't see it clearly, but they felt it acutely. Under the cold grip of war, they all suffered. When the rain fell, it was almost that they could feel the beating, trembling heart of their countries.

Why were they here? For what reason did the countries exist? They were the spirit of the people. That's why some died and some persisted after oblivion had claimed their names. After the winner tore down any and all remnant that their opponent had even existed in the world, the only thing that could possibly anchor them was the pride of their people, some who never broke.

Others faded when they were divided, when they broke apart and it was welcomed by their people, it became ugly. Much like watching someone's arm arbitrarily falling to the floor, or witnessing as their heart burst in their chest, the body falling with a sickening thud to the ground.

For others… It was an identity change, not death. Like the rebirth of a phoenix, the country would rise from the chaos of their people with a new name, a new set of ideals.

New names, new creeds… none of it changed the past from which the country emerged. Nothing could change that they had killed their kin, that they had married loosely, or that they had hearts that they were forced to ignore.

They were driven by uncontrollable gluttony, the supreme desire to own, to have, to _possess._ The small were tossed about and ripped to pieces by the large, the armies that warred with each other hardly knew of the bloody turmoil that would occur between just two entities.

The most powerful of them could take a bullet point blank to the head and get up, yet they were defenseless against the words of transient being whom lives could be less than a heartbeat to the country themselves.

Young countries can only look on. They bear none of their predecessors scars.

_Why are you going to war __again__?_

_You'll understand when you're older, but by then, you won't want to._

_Come back._

So many don't.

**It's late and I'm suffering. Not to complain, but this is why I don't particularly like being left to my own thoughts, they don't like to be kind to me. All of these ****existential****crises**** that I undergo when I'm able to contemplate what has happened in the world, what has yet to ****occur****. Knowing that even something as seemingly ****unmovable**** as a ****country**** can die... I just seem to have to think about why, when we blame others, we are blaming countries by name. _Oh, America keeps spending as though nothing is wrong. Afghanistan and those terrorists. _I have to say I am quite tired of it. I am far too in love with this world, it's like watching a loved one pass to see the countries ailing as they do, as having watched Hetalia has caused me to think... Perhaps, yes, it is for the best that I think further than names. **


	2. We All Have Stories

We All Have Stories

If I spoke to you in my language, you would not understand. If I started at the beginning, you would not wait around.

The first half of my life is a blur of war and conquests. It was a time when it was glorious, when it was expected of us to do so, to go out and shed blood for our pride. And I did, eagerly, for the one I always left behind. That is why we fought, for the ones left behind. Always for them.

How can I explain how it happens? How could I not fight for my family? How could you condemn me, when even that colony did the same thing? I waited too long. But what had happened… Do I say that it had to happen? That it was a natural progression of life for a country? My people were starving; our money meant nothing to anyone. My people burned it to stay alive. I bled to keep my people alive. So when that man appeared, with promises of glory again, of bread on the table and full bellies for our little ones, what monster could turn that away?

All we can hear are the pleading cries of our people. We are easily swayed by their thoughts and feelings. We are conditioned such; to make them happy means that we don't have to suffer. Like the mother that quiets her spoiled child with a candy.

He took the helm, became the beloved captain of my people, a hero, a savior. He broke many rules that the world had laid out for me, always saying that it was for the best, that what I was doing was good. And for a while, actually, it was. I didn't feel weak at every moment, nor was I dizzy, nor did I succumb to the fatigue that had kept me bed-ridden for so long. I felt free after so long. I was willing to do anything to keep it.

It keeps me lying awake at night these days. The brainwashing that had been done. Children turned against their parents, neighbor against neighbor, and brother against brother. It wasn't just contained to me; my boss by then had his eyes set on the world. I saw it, I am ashamed to say, but my people had a new found strength.

It started small, but violent. I had no idea that my people were capable of such hate. These people, they were also my people, but no longer. We got rid of them. We killed them in vast numbers, and when it wasn't enough, we went to surrounding countries. But I didn't care; it would make me great again. I could save my brother, who had grown weak alongside me. Now was our time. We would be great.

Oh… but I can still hear the screams. My people, they still are haunted by the past. They cannot escape it any better than can I. The bodies… the mutilated bodies that littered the yards, that froze when winter passed, that bloated when the weather warmed, that created that sickly smoke when burned…

We live in the shadows of the walls that have been built, both by us and by forces outside of our hands. As a country, I receive the blame of my people, of the people around the world, and oh how I ache from it.

Gone are the days when battle was glory. Gone are the days when the killings of an army were ratified.

I am sick… so sick of myself. I envy that short time allotted to my people. They must only live under the shadows of the past for so long, while it is my job to build the wall they use.

I wonder sometimes. Do they realize I am here? Most likely not.


	3. We Don't Forget

_We Don't Forget_

_I can close my eyes and see it. The fields, the sun… that warm sun. How do I scream out my intentions, my pain and my disease when I have no voice of my own with which to yell? It is a truly rotten thing. It eats away at my soul. I wonder how much longer I can survive when my people are dying all around me, when the earth tears open her maw to swallow me up. I wonder if they can see me out there, if I even register on their radar. The one who left me here, and my close neighbor. _

_I wonder where I am sometimes. I can't look in a mirror to see myself. I hear pretty words on the radio, I feel the peoples good intentions radiating into the core of my being but I wonder if aid has truly come fast enough. I wonder what will happen when that generation has been taken from my shores. Will they come back? Will they remember the mother who gave birth to them, the country and land that fed them the best that it could? Or I wonder if they haven't forgotten already. I wonder if they don't look at the people who now care for them and wonder how it could have been any other way in this life. I wonder if they will not look at me and compare me to the country with whom they now reside and think little of me…_

_I feel it, so close… I wonder if I will truly survive this. I know that it is slim, that sickness is next, that despair is creeping in even with so many people…_

_I hear voices singing. I hear the hope. I hear a child of mine crying out into the music._

_Some how, with this, I am content. I am not better, and I know that many of my children are sick yet, but I am selfish. I will be here longer than they and this is a realization that I am sure they have also come to. I know that their children, my _children, wont forget their mother land. They will still see me, they will still hear me, and one day maybe they will return to me. Perhaps they will embrace me…

As I drift into another night of dreary unconsciousness, I reflect on this… And I hope. 

**Shit what am I doing? Haiti, do you think that your children will forget you? I hear about the people taking children to American orphanages and the like, and I wonder what Haiti will do when that generation is missing. Mostly, I wonder how a nation so close to us is usually so invisible to us.**


	4. We Are Young

We Are Young

It is vain and shallow of me. The way that I conduct myself in this world is nothing short of shameless, yet I continue on this track.

Since achieving independence, I seem to have taken it upon myself to be greater than any and all that came before me. All the while my people were still sending their children back to him for a "proper education". Symbols of wealth that I embraced with my whole heart.

I would spend more time than I should have looking out over that vast ocean…

But I see… perhaps we have always be susceptible to a level of entitlement. If we have money, we don't have to do the world ourselves. We can hire people. We can _buy _people. Then they weren't people anymore. Branded and sold like cattle, chained at the foot to one another, forced to work for nothing. Their children died, their families were torn apart, their women violated, their men humiliated. All of it for so long condoned by the government, because we relied on that work. _I relied on that work. _How could I be strong if there was no production? But I heard it, a niggling voice in the back of my head that said this was wrong. I heard another voice retort, _It is our right, we are stronger, better, white_. And often these voices fought in my head, giving me migraines, making me sick.

The war that followed these thoughts… I felt as though I was being torn apart from the inside. Never before had I felt such pain. The shouts of people, the rapport of musket shot, the fires that spread and claimed. And I was alone for it. All alone.

When the flames of war died, and I could call myself whole again, it was much like the children who had fought with a parent irreconcilably; all of a sudden there wasn't enough space.

For the longest time, I believed myself to be alone here, a pioneer in an uncharted land. I looked to the west where the sun set over mountains. I wondered to myself what was over that horizon. My people called to me _"Expand!" "Grow" "More!" "LAND!" My people were growing as fast as I would let them. And it happened again. That same feeling of entitlement. I was encroaching on land that wasn't mine, forcing beliefs that weren't theirs. _

_Looking back now, I see all that I lost in them… Brother…_

_I had almost reached that coast on the other side of the world. She was the last thing in my way. A child of my southern neighbor and a man from Europe; if I said I was not smitten I would be a liar. In her were all of the beauties that the world would want. She was warm, fertile and, as I later found, wealthy. But I was in the middle of a war, and when I was able, finally, to return to her, I found that she was independent. But I wanted her, and so I took her. _

_I proved myself in one war. I killed my heart in another. Who knew that something like that could take life for so long? I didn't fight in one; oh but I was terrified. The closest I had come to dieing and not a single punch was thrown. It scared me. I am fighting a war even now… or am I? I don't know anymore. I don't know how that man did it. I can never voice my respect. I must wait for my people to do that. _

_I have no voice of my own. I am a puppet on strings, given voice by people who cannot agree. _

_Taking. Never having enough. _

_This is my life. Taking. Always wanting more. _

_Isn't that what you expect of me?_


	5. We Are Scared

We Are Scared

I can see them, the little beings, wallowing in their blood stained victory. Over what? Over the King? Over me? Do they think themselves so great? So strong? I can break the largest of them with two fingers, lay the most fair in the ground. Their lives won't amount to a blink of my eye and yet... and yet they think that what they have done is permanent. They are the ones who struck out, over and over again... until I was stained in the blood of their fallen brethren. But for them, this was what had to happen. We were behind the times, everyone else was doing it. I can still hear the call that rang out from the west, _Revolution_, _Revolution! _And they set me to it.

One side killed my children, the other side killed my children... and the little one... the frail little prince who would have ruled them as his blood ordained... that same blood that still stains my body, still burns into my flesh like acid... Tears that would never fall again I shed over that family, those bodies, torn from my arms and scattered. To think that I don't know what happened to them... I am sick.

In that blood a new flag was stained and raised. Conquest. Growth. And always that damnable, god-forsaken word! _REVOLUTION! _

I always thought that I would always be the same, but in this way, parts of me were changed, renamed, torn down and rebuilt so different from what it was... My people once so unique, now huddled in sameness. A gray pallor fell over everything. The sun was hidden behind the perpetual clouds of the same never ending snow that was always, always, always there!

Ah ha! Haha! Hahahahahahahaha~!

Help me...

Even now, I wake from this nightmare. It is not buried in my past; far too recent are the scars issued unto the world, my neighbors, my _children_. A cold sweat grips me, and I am afraid. Nothing stops the monster that rages in the back of my mind. Nothing heals the pain deep in my heart. I am alone now...

That is all I have truly accomplished. I am cold and alone.


	6. We Are Desperate

We Are Desperate

Dark clouds loom in the northern sky as I look over my land that isn't mine. Dissent rumbles in my mind and pain grips my heart. How long since my brothers walked away? How long since they built their homes and forgot me? Would I have forgotten them?

I think so. We try to forget these kinds of things.

How can I help it?

I hear planes over head and wonder what images they take away, what statistics they are looking for. I see reporters on my streets and curse them. They do not understand what is happening, they cannot. They are not suffering like me, like my people. They are not wondering if their brothers will come home. My body is sore from the fighting, but somehow my will holds on.

It is that man's fault. I am convinced. Of course, because it could not be me. Never. It is getting warmer, but it cannot fight the chill of that hand looming over me and my existence.

I am out numbered and out gunned. I will do what I must.

Until the last.

**I MEAN NOTHING BY THIS. Sort of… **


	7. We March On

We March On

From the soles of my feet to the very tips of my fingers. If I dwell too long, I can feel them freezing over again, but I shake my head and look up again at the warm sun over my head. I feel the living soil under my feet. I am alive. I am quite alive.

For the longest time, this had been my way. To draw from the earth, though nurturing, the way I tried to behave in everything, though I had to wonder many times… so many times. I had to steel my resolve.

I am quite sure that many times I could have, should have, died. That the buildings torn down and the fields salted were all a part of the ploy to kill me.

I am quite sure that I had died. But perhaps because those times I wanted to, it did not happen. The screams of the past echo dully in my head, like they are trying to fall away. I am quite happy to see them go, but with them goes my dreams of the past, of carefree days in the fields…

I see the steel and concrete go up, reaching for the sky like a mercy. Ever higher and higher. I cannot blame the buildings. We are so vulnerable here on land. I want to extend my hands all the way to that sun, to take hold or be consumed by it, and forget.

A warm breeze passes me, carrying the smells of the fields in the west. Those days from long ago are so very, very much gone. But I feel it still, the feeling of wanting to continue. No, I will keep going. The past is the past. This future, I never thought that I would see it, but here I am. Maybe one day…


	8. We Are the Blood

**We Are the Blood**

I am torn in two directions. I wonder why my house has never been quite peaceful. I wonder why my children kill each other like this… at all. Traffic is stopped, curfew set out. Tourism stops and I feel myself begin to stagnate. I'm scared. I'm scared because I am dying a slow, divided death. Buildings crumble under the fire of crudely made bombs and artillery shells. My children bleed and die in conflicts. Why are they fighting, they are all my children… why are they killing? Why why why? I hate myself because of it. I fell as though I myself am the enemy of my own self, as though my right arm were secretly conspiring to destroy me. I think sometimes that I could just cut it off and then I wouldn't have to worry about betrayal anymore, I wouldn't have to worry about an attack from an enemy so close to me, an enemy that is me. I don't, that would be wrong. So I go instead for a walk and see children covered in soot begging for money and food and medicine. But the people they ask from are scared and poor as well. I didn't want this to happen, I wanted something else… something good but wouldn't it be good so long as this ends? Is there a way that it has to go for it to be okay? I hope and wonder that it could not be so, because I am in disagreement. I want my people again to speak with one voice. I want my people again to know what they want of me and those who take charge of me. I want this confusion to end. By blood, for blood, with blood, in blood.


	9. We Forget

We Forget

I hear the sounds of cars and trucks on the highway late at night and wonder how they got so close to my home. Lights from buildings in the city reflect off the clouds above and give the world and eerie colour. I cannot go walking at night, no matter my insomnia; it isn't safe. But in the early morning I shall. I will walk down old streets now cement and asphalt, the old cobbled ways torn up and paved over. Even as an early morning drizzle falls, I will look around and realize that this isn't the world I built. A car will fly by, shaking me from my thoughts. I will not be able to get them back though, for new ones will preoccupy me. My coat is the only thing defending me from the morning chill, but I would not have it any other way, this has always been my way.

I walk to the great river and hear the gongs of the Clock ringing. It is 4:00am. When, I wonder, did the water become so cloudy? I see the drops of rain in the light of street lamps. When had the world passed by me? There is much that I remember of time long ago, but there is much that I have forgotten, and will never get back. Another car, and again my thoughts are scattered.


	10. We Don't Understand

We Don't Understand

My body won't move like I want it to. I can't smile or laugh like I'm used to. I'm depressed, I'm in a depression. They feel like burns across my skin, and I am too stiff to move, my leg feels broken is it broken? I think it's broken but I have no proof, no solid evidence, just numbers and bubbles and some inflammation. Inflation? I don't much know. It hurts so much. I'm popping pills like an addict. Stimulus Package this and Bailout that is it working yet? They tell me to cover it up and not to let anyone see because the scars are ugly and they make people worry. I'm a hero, I don't make people worry… right? I cover them up but they are still stiff, and I limp. My neck is stiff and I haven't slept since my crash Ahh I just wanna close my eyes and dream of better times…

I've totally lost my appetite. I don't want to get up or talk at all, but everyone wants and wants and wants and am I really still fighting in a war for God's sake? My chest hurts… Are my ribs really as brittle as I feel? I don't know what's happened and I can't see all my damage but everyone keeps telling me I'll be alright so I'll be alright right?

He's not around anymore to help me…. I'm in this by myself. Because I'm a grown up and grownups can't go crying back to Mum for help, or even reassurance. Adults have to stand alone… right? I think so that what I keep hearing and what keeps being said so it must be true right?

The market still isn't looking good and I wonder if there may be an infection…. That would be bad I'm already putting a balm on it what do you mean 'Too big to fail'? I want it to stop please please please make it stop….

The room sounds so quiet…. I can't hear the machines I try to tell them over and over again "O+, O+" but they don't seem to hear… Where are my glasses I can't see.

I'm tired… I'm depressed, I'm in depression…


	11. We Move On

**We Move On**

Thousands of them. One little tear in the fabric and there were so many of them, scared and haunted and happy, because they were going home, to their families, or at the least nearer than they have been in many years. It is sad too, because I know what will be coming soon. He won't survive at this rate, and before long, the man that I said that I hated will die. Or will he? I am not sure, but if anyone was to survive, it would be him. He is too self-sure to die, isn't he? A part of me hopes against hope that he is. There are people in the street crying for a fallen loved one, someone who's heart only wanted to be free, and then left the body. I am surprised that these people have tears left, is that cold of me? I think we have all become cold in these last years, very cold. We have been broken apart and torn from our own loved ones, we are reestablishing who we are.

I pulled down my hat and hid my hair beneath it and went to join the other's who were helping these Easterners as they crossed over my land.


	12. We Are Near

We Are Near

We could touch, if we wanted, if our history wasn't tainted with blood. We could embrace, if we cared to, were our existences not ordered apart. And in the fraction of a second, I would be at your door, silently asking to make amends for past wrongs, for present misgivings.

I can't undo what has been done, even for me, that kind of thing is impossible. I cannot undo the nights of tears or the blood that stained your clothing or the cries that kept the others awake at night with shared pain.

You will not let me touch them, your wrists, where you were shackled that time when I lost my mind. I won't let you touch the scar over my heart from when you set it to burn. With pain in my chest and sorrow making my blood go cold, I watch you turn from me, and I cannot, in that instance, forgive myself for the past.

I dream of you, in the bed we, on occasion, shared. The first sip of every drink, I drink to your memory. The lonely nights that come in the cold months, oh, I cannot be bothered to sleep. My bed is cold and uninviting on those nights, and I sit out and smoke instead. I only notice the sun rising when I can finally see the sky over the land you left me to.

You are the only one who could do this, who could ruin me entirely, and you used that to your full advantage. You tore me down and cut me apart, and I welcomed it, plotting my revenge. Ah, but while I had mine, you got yours in the end, and left me in a checkmate. There is nothing left, I suppose, but even that bleakness cannot take away my last hope for _us_.

I believe it was said best by one of your own, we truly could have been wonderful together.

Even now, I wait for your kiss to set my heart at ease.


	13. We Search

**We Search**

Even when I close my eyes, this new world is vivid. With a deep breath I can smell the heavy oak embankment I stand on. The whole world, in fact, has become oak wood and sea water. Oak and salt and possibly the perpetual rain; yes, these are the smells of the new world. A soft breeze suddenly includes inland leaf litter to the list of the smells in this world, nutty and dark and so thick I taste the life in it. I want to shake in the breeze but I'm too busy feeling these surroundings. I listen for the sounds that make up the rest of this new space. There are the mourning cries of the gulls, heart breaking and piercing. The sea birds that have seen more than my eyes my ever see. Have they smelled other shores and heard the call of other lands? The small 'patta' of their wings gets added too, a sound like a steady heart beat. There are small waves schlepping softly against the wood and the sand. I have to breathe deeply as I feel the land pull me in all directions. When the vertigo passes, I open my eyes again, and all the world has become green and grey, every shade of the colours. The grey that possesses the sky overhead is trying so hard to be blue it almost hurts to watch its struggle. The ocean too is grey, but calm and serine in its divinely assigned position. I walk on from the grey world and into the green. I am assaulted my warm, thick air and everything is alive with it. The grand stands of trees create a palace greater than I've ever seen, and everything possesses a hush. There are new colours here, browns and some reds, all hushed, all in possession of a wizened _knowing_ feeling. There are secrets here that I'll never know. I stop my walking again, my boots completely silenced by the fallen leaves, by the quiet that oozes from every branch in the forest. I stare straight up into the canopy. Here the sad, grey-blue sky cannot see me, cannot cry its lament upon me, though I can hear it now, the patter of the sky's great tears. It is not vertigo this time; I feel my very heart being pulled into everything. It is a full feeling. I feel like a tree and stretch my hands up as high as I can reach. I spread my arms to either side now; I want to feel this world under my own hands, and so I do. I feel the bark of the trees, made soft by new mosses, made tough by ancient ochre lichens. The ground is soft and spongy, though I dare not search further below, afraid of exposing too much of this darling new world before it wishes to show me. I content myself to run my hands across stray boulders and tiny saplings. I close my eyes once more, and I hear another sound, a thump, like a startled rabbit giving warning to its fellows, but the sound is barely there. I listen for it, and feel watched. A swift turn and something catches my eye, a flash of gold in the world of brown and green and grey. The thump of a startled rabbit's foot and the glimpse of something new, something so captivating and precious. This new world… it is the last thing, I know, that I will ever ask for with all of my heart like this. At the end of the world, this is precious thing is all I'll need…

A/N: For that little feeling that will always and forever make me cry as irrationally as I'll ever be.


End file.
